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Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Mk 3:20-35 |
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| Background: We pick up Mark’s Gospel today near its beginning. Jesus has made his announcement that God’s kingdom is coming, by which he meant that God’s loving forgiveness was all around, only a foot and a half above a human’s head (as a woman from County Kerry once said). His friends and neighbors and some of his relatives were astonished. This nice, pleasant young man was suddenly acting strangely. Who did he think he was? How did he find the nerve to begin to talk about the fulfillment of Israel’s mission, apparently through his own words and deeds? Was he crazy or something? And if he was some sort of political revolutionary, why didn’t he pull together his army and get rid of the Romans? No one could see Jesus as doing that. So they assumed he was sick. Or perhaps, those who had reason not to like him, suggested, he was in league with the devil. |
read the padre |
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Story: A young man who had not played basketball in high school – except in school yard games – grew a couple of inches in his last year in high school and began to dominate the school yard games during the summer. All of a sudden, instead of just being another sweaty kid in the park, he became a very good basketball player. He was persuaded his first year in college to go out for the team. Most of his friends and family back in the neighborhood, not knowing about the summer games or not taking them seriously, thought this was pretty funny. All right he had grown a few inches and always had a pretty good shot, but he was awkward and clumsy and not very quick and couldn’t jump much (he was white so of course he was slow and couldn’t jump! Right?). The coach who had scouted his team in high school paid no attention and would have cut him from the team if an assistant coach hadn’t noticed a major change in the way our hero played. So he made the team. He didn’t play much. The team had a terrible season. In the last game, which didn’t count because they were so far behind the conference leaders, he did, much to every one’s surprise, make twenty one points, fifteen of them from the three point range. When he went home to the neighborhood he told everyone that they would win the conference the year after next and he’d be all American. They all laughed at him. Who did he think he was? What right did he have to pretend he was someone so important? What justified his confidence? So they ignored him and a lot of his friends had nothing to do with him that summer. The next year the team finished second in the conference and he average eighteen points a game. No one in the neighborhood woul talk to him. When he was a junior they did win the conference champion ship and made it to the final four. That summer he didn’t even come home. |
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